“And, Uncle Abner, I believe this was the same man who also shot Dancing Cloud!” she blurted out. “Dancing Cloud said that his assailant had a wooden leg. This man had a wooden leg!”
She grabbed her uncle’s hand before he had a chance to respond to what she had just disclosed. “Let’s go after him, Uncle Abner,” Lauralee pleaded, yanking on his hand. “Please? Now? If we wait longer we’ll never be able to catch up with him.”
“Whoa, slow down a minute,” Abner said, leading Lauralee to a chair.
By no choice of her own she sat down. Her fingers dug into the arms of the chair so hard her knuckles were white.
Abner knelt on a knee before her. “Now tell me about the man,” he said softly. “Describe him to me. Then we’ll go to the sheriff and let him take care of this for you. We’ll talk about your mother later. Your aunt and I want to know everything.”
“He’ll get away if we wait any time at all,” Lauralee said, her voice breaking. “Please, Uncle Abner. I know which way he went. Please let us go after him.”
“Describe him to me,” Abner said, ignoring her insistence to do otherwise.
Lauralee inhaled a quavering, frustrated breath. “He has bright red hair and cold blue eyes,” she said. “He was a man with much standing during the war. He led a regiment of men. He was in charge of everything that happened at my parents’ plantation. He made sure nothing was left behind . . . except me. And that was only because I knew to hide from the Yankees.”
Abner rose to his full height. He stared down at Nancy. “You know who fits that description?” he said, his voice drawn, as though in total of awe of such a discovery. “That damn son of a bitch.”
“That railroad man from North Carolina. Clint McCloud,” Nancy offered softly. “Surely she has described Clint McCloud.”
“The one and only,” Abner said, turning to gaze down at Lauralee again.
“Yes,” Lauralee said excitedly. “I’m sure it was Clint McCloud. Dancing Cloud said that was his assailant’s name!”
“Come on, honey,” Abner said, slipping his hand from hers. “I think I will oblige you the opportunity to meet up with this fella again. We shall surprise him at his hotel before he gets the chance to pack up and leave town.”
“You aren’t going to the sheriff?” Lauralee asked, scrambling to her feet.
“No, like you, I doubt if we have the time,” Abner said, placing a hand to Lauralee’s elbow. “Although I’m sure Clint doesn’t know that you know his name, he knows you’ll be able to describe him. If we take the time to go to the sheriff, the damn railroad man will have already skipped town.”
Abner looked over his shoulder at Nancy as he ushered Lauralee toward the door. “Darling, I’ll be back as soon as I get this ugly business over with,” he said.
Lauralee also looked over at Nancy. “I’m sorry for having disturbed your evening, but I had to tell Uncle Abner.”
“I understand,” Nancy said. “Get along with you. I hope you catch him. I never did like the looks of Clint McCloud. By his shifty behavior I always thought he had a skeleton or two hidden in his closet.”
Lauralee and Abner went outside to his horse and buggy. They were soon riding away from the hospital, the horse moving in a fast trot along Western Avenue, toward Broadway.
“Besides him being a railroad man, do you know this Clint McCloud, otherwise?” Lauralee asked. “Please don’t tell me you were in his regiment during the war.”
“Honey, I had more control of my destiny during the Civil War than being ordered around by the likes of Clint McCloud,” Abner said, laughing throatily. He slapped his horse’s reins, rode over the railroad tracks, then turned left onto Broadway. “I knew of his regiment and heard tell of some of the horrendous acts they pulled. But I came to know him better by his association with the railroads here in town. He has quite an influence on any improvements that are voted on for the railroad.”
The horse and buggy swung to a quick stop before the Byers Hotel, one of Mattoon’s finest hotels, where General Ulysses S. Grant had stayed for a short time during the war, and also President Abraham Lincoln.
Abner jumped from the buggy and wrapped the reins around a hitching rail. Lauralee left the buggy and hurried to his side.
Breathless, and with a thumping heart, she looked up at the tall brick building, where many windows looked out onto the thoroughfare.
“Do you think he’s here?” she asked as Abner took her by the elbow and whisked her toward the double doors that led inside the grandly furnished hotel.
“This is where he’s made his residence during his stay in Mattoon,” Abner said, nodding a hello to the desk clerk as he headed on toward the steep staircase that led to the upstairs rooms. “His job would be finished here soon. He was supposed to go back to North Carolina then. He has a wife and child waiting for him there.”
“If he fought for the North, why does he live in the South?” Lauralee asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Normally he is from somewhere up north. Some years ago he went south to Tennessee and the Carolinas to work on the railroads,” Abner explained. “He met his wife there. He makes his residence somewhere in North Carolina, and for the most part, his job keeps him there. He only came to Mattoon to help out with instructing building the new spur west of town. He’s been here most of the summer.”
Lauralee’s eyes were anxious and her throat was dry as they came to the second-floor landing, and then the third. Abner placed a hand on the holstered pistol at his right side. Lauralee had not known the firearm was there. The coattail kept it hidden from sight.
Slipping the pistol from the holster, Abner took stealthy steps down the corridor until they came to one room in particular.
Abner nodded to Lauralee to step aside.
Her pulse racing, she did as he said.
Then she jumped with alarm when her uncle kicked the door open and stepped hurriedly inside.
It was almost completely dark outside now as night fell in its black silence. The room held dim shadows and was quiet.
Lauralee inched her way inside and found that her uncle was the only one there. His pistol was holstered again and he was going through drawers, and then the chifferobe.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Lauralee said, disappointment heavy on her heart.
“Seems he is,” Abner said, sighing disconsolately.
“I knew it.” Lauralee stifled an angry sob behind her hand. “Now I’ll never be able to see that he’s put behind bars, or better yet—hung.”
Abner went to Lauralee and drew her into his arms. “I could have the sheriff send a posse after him, but because of his association with the railroad, Clint knows this countryside well,” he said solemnly. “I doubt he’d be caught. He’d be like the field mice, quicker than the eye, and much more clever.”
Downhearted and ready to cry, Lauralee eased from Abner’s arms. She went to the window and stared down at the activity on Broadway, a man just now lighting the gaslights. She had never been as disappointed as now. She had come so close to making things right for her mother, and Dancing Cloud.
But now?
She doubted she ever would.
A sudden thought sprang to her mind as she watched the sky darkening overhead. “Oh, no,” she cried, recalling her plans to go to Paul to explain things to him.
She turned wide eyes to Abner. “Uncle Abner, are you planning to go to the hospital and stay with Nancy for the rest of the evening?” she asked guardedly, not wanting him to suspect anything.
“Yes, I expect so,” Abner said, forking an eyebrow when he saw something in her expression that seemed amiss. Only moments ago she was disappointed. Now she seemed anxious about something.
“Can I drive you there, then borrow your horse and buggy?” Lauralee asked, pleading up at him with her violet eyes.
“Honey, you don’t plan to try and find Clint McCloud, do you?” he said, placing a gentle hand to her cheek. “It’s obvious that he’s dangerous where you
are concerned.”
“You said yourself that he’s more than likely left town,” Lauralee said softly. “I’m sure I’ll be safe. Please allow me to use your buggy for a while tonight, Uncle Abner?”
“I’m not sure,” Abner said, kneading his chin. “I just don’t know. I imagine Nancy would jump all over me if I allowed you to go out wandering the streets, unescorted.”
“You said yourself that this city of Mattoon is for the most part genteel and trusting,” Lauralee persisted. “And you could give me the loan of your pistol while I’m gone. Please, Uncle Abner? Please?”
“Where on earth do you want to go so badly?” Abner asked, taken aback by her persistence.
“To see Paul Brown,” Lauralee blurted out without thinking.
Abner’s eyes lit up. “Well, now,” he said, smiling slowly. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? Honey, I’d not mind at all lending you my horse and buggy if you plan to travel out to become better acquainted with Paul Brown. That’d please me greatly, Lauralee. I thought you’d see much in that man that you would take a liking to.”
Lauralee felt guilty for misleading her uncle. But she felt that this little deceit was the only way to correct the larger deceit of the previous night. Her uncle would be disappointed when he discovered the full truth about her flight to the Brown farm tonight.
But he would get over it. When he saw just how exceedingly happy Dancing Cloud made her, how could he argue that?
Their short jaunt back to Dr. Kemper’s was done in an awkward silence. Lauralee was afraid to say anything that might bring to light what she truly had planned for tonight.
And she could not help but dwell on Clint McCloud having gotten away so spotlessly clean again from the law.
Oh, if only his pistol had not misfired!
The man would be lying in the morgue even now with a bullet through his back!
Lauralee pulled the buggy to a halt before Dr. Kemper’s. So afraid that her uncle would change his mind, she scarcely breathed when he departed the buggy. She smiled clumsily at him when he slipped his pistol onto her lap.
“You do know how to use a weapon, don’t you?” Abner said, nervously slipping his hands in his rear pants’ pockets. “I wouldn’t want you to come to the hospital with a blown-off toe, or anything else, for that matter.”
“Don’t worry,” Lauralee said, laying the pistol beside her on the seat. “If I’d come face to face with that damn Yankee again, you’d better believe I’d know enough about this firearm to shoot him dead.”
Abner stood there for a moment. His eyes closely scrutinized her. There was still something amiss in her behavior tonight. But he shrugged and gave her a wave.
“Get on with you and don’t you and Paul do anything too romantic,” he said, laughing.
“We won’t, I assure you,” Lauralee said, for certain her uncle had nothing to worry about in that department. When she got through telling Paul what she had on her mind, he would never see her as someone to romance again. He might even hate her.
She gave her uncle a wave, then rode down Western Avenue again. She cast her eyes heavenward, worrying about the time of night. If Paul was already on his way to the Peterson House, then she would be put in a position of doing more convincing than she had wished to do.
If she could find him still at his home she could tell him quickly why she was there, take Dancing Cloud’s horse, and put that foolish part of her life behind her.
One thing for certain. She couldn’t allow Paul to lure her down to the pond again. There was something romantic about being with a man by a body of water in the moonlight.
The only man with whom she wanted to share such a romantic interlude was Dancing Cloud.
The wheels of her buggy clattered as she rode over the tracks. Her heart pounding, she then turned left and rode down Broadway Avenue again.
* * *
Dancing Cloud slipped into his fringed breeches and his moccasins. He picked up his shirt and studied it, the bloodstains and the bullet hole having ruined it.
“I will meet up with you some day,” he said, his thoughts on Clint McCloud. “You will pay. For sure you will pay.”
Tossing the shirt aside, Dancing Cloud went to the door bare-chested and inched it open. His eyebrows lifted with surprise. The lawman was gone.
The smell of food wafted down the corridor. He had to believe that the lawman had gone to eat.
The smell of food also made Dancing Cloud know that some would soon be brought to his room. He had to escape before that happened. By the time they found him gone he would be on his way to the pond at the far edge of town. He worried about the house that sat not all that far from the pond. If he was discovered there he might be mistaken for an intruder, and shot.
Or perhaps the one who caught him might have a generous, caring heart like Noah Brown, Dancing Cloud hoped to himself.
Dancing Cloud tiptoed down the empty, dimly lit corridor, then on outside. When he reached the road, he limped along, then forced himself into a soft trot. He groaned. The pain in his chest was so severe every inch of the way seemed his last.
“Water,” he kept whispering to himself. “I must reach the healing water.”
He spied a lone horse hitched to a rail alongside the road. Without any further thought he went and pulled himself into the saddle. Holding one hand over his throbbing wound, and bending low over the horse, he guided the steed off onto a fairly deserted side street, then rode on through the city.
The pond.
He had to find the pond.
Chapter 17
I shall not hear his voice complain,
But who shall stop the patient rain?
—ALICE MEYNELL
Instead of turning off the road in the direction of Paul Brown’s house Lauralee swung her uncle’s horse and buggy from Broadway Avenue into the circular drive of the Peterson House. Although she was anxious to get to Paul and get this over with, and knowing that she was taking chances that he might arrive at the Petersons’ before she left to go to his, it was a chance she must take.
She felt the need to change into something less provocative before seeing him.
She would even tie her hair up in a tight bun atop her head and make sure her face was pale without makeup.
She wished to make him change his mind about her. That would make telling him that she no longer wished to see him easier.
Drawing tight rein before the front porch of the Peterson House she left the buggy quickly and secured the reins.
She looked guardedly up and down Broadway Avenue. When she saw no signs of Paul or Clint McCloud she turned and fled inside the house.
She scrambled up the stairs and went to her room and sorted through her clothes. When she found a drab cotton dress that had been worn many times at the orphanage and had been washed repeatedly in strong lye soap and bleach, she smiled mischievously.
“This should do just fine,” she whispered to herself. “I never ever felt attractive in this terrible rag.”
* * *
Seeing the pond shimmering beneath the soft rays of the moon a short distance away, Dancing Cloud sighed with relief.
He had found it.
And none too soon.
He was about to drop from the horse from exhaustion and pain.
Glancing down at his wound he found a small trickle of blood flowing from one end where the stitches had been torn open from the jerky ride on the stolen horse. This steed was not as gentle as his.
Seeing soft lamplight in the windows of the farmhouse that sat a short distance from the pond, Dancing Cloud drew tight rein and dismounted the feisty steed. His shoulders hunched, giving into the pain, he led the horse amid a thick stand of bushes, then went the rest of the way to the pond on foot.
When he reached the water he did not take the time to remove his fringed buckskin breeches or his moccasins. He was too anxious to get in the water and allow the true healing process to begin.
The breeze was cool and the wa
ter was cold and penetrating as he walked into the pond until he was hip-high.
Then knowing how painful it would be, but seeing it as necessary, he dove downward into the water and swam beneath the surface for a while.
Then he bobbed to the surface again and began taking his powerful strokes. He swam from one side of the pond to the other, the pain intense with each and every movement.
Thoughts of his father stayed with him as he swam, as though his father were there, taking each stroke and bearing the pain with him.
His thoughts shifted to his time in the spirit world where he had been with his beloved family. He thanked Wah-kon-tah again for that opportunity.
His thoughts then strayed to his mountain home where his people awaited him and his leadership. There was no time for mourning the death of his father yet. When he returned and was among his people they could gather around him and mourn with him.
Now he must focus on getting well and on being able to make the long journey to his home. He understood that it might take several more days.
He would also spend time loving Lauralee so that leaving her newfound family would not be so painful for her.
He could see it in her eyes every time she spoke of leaving them that it was not going to be an easy task for her.
He would see to it that he would help his o-ge-ye get her through all of her sorrows and misgivings about leaving the Petersons.
He would make every wrong right for her!
The sound of an approaching horse and buggy on the small dirt lane that led to the farmhouse made Dancing Cloud swim quickly to the side closest to the farmhouse. He placed his feet on the graveled bottom of the pond. He stooped over and huddled close to the land, hoping that whoever was arriving in the horse and buggy had not caught sight of him swimming beneath the light of the moon.
His heart thudded wildly within his chest as he waited for the horse and buggy to stop. When it finally came to a halt, he listened for footsteps, and then voices as the visitor was met on the small porch of the farmhouse.
His eyebrows forked when he thought he recognized the soft voice of the woman.
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